The Crimson petal and the white

FIFTEEN

Spring is here, and everyone who knows Agnes Rackham is amazed at how she's come back from the dead. Such a short while ago she lay like a corpse in her darkened, airless room: now, dressed gaily, she's brightening the house with her angelic singing voice as she prepares to meet the Season.

"Open the curtains, Letty!" she cries, everywhere she goes.

All day she's practising: standing erect, turning demurely, smiling fetchingly, walking without the footsteps showing. There's an art to moving as if on castors, and only an elite few can master it.

"Lay the book on my head, Clara," she says to her maidservant, "and stand well back!"

Nor are Agnes's labours confined to the four walls of the Rackham house: she's been making frequent sallies to Oxford and Regent Streets, and returning with candy-striped parcels large and small. The Prince of Wales may still be on the Riviera, but for Agnes Rackham the Party That Lasts A Hundred Days has begun. She feels almost like a D@ebutante again!

Of course, it's all thanks to her guardian angel. How encouraging it is to know there's one creature in the world who loves her and wishes her well! What a relief to be truly, deeply understood! Her guardian angel appreciates that she has Higher Reasons for seeking success in the Season-no frivolous desire, but a contest of Good against Evil. Evil is what's made her ill and done its utmost to rob her of a place in Society; Evil is what she's banishing from her life now-with the help of her spirit rescuer, and those tiny rosy pills Mrs Gooch has introduced her to. Each pill no bigger than a sequin; each pill more than a match for the pains in her head!

Two dozen kid gloves have arrived yesterday.

This will do for a start, though she expects to go through many more, as the silly things aren't washable. ("Honestly, Clara, I don't know why there's such a fuss about Great Advances in Knowledge, when we ladies are constantly having to replace such a simple necessity.") Agnes has a pair of new kids on the glove-stretchers, to break them in, but the thumbs are still impossible to get on even with powder. Ridiculous! Her thumbs haven't thickened, have they? Clara assures her they're as slender as ever.

Gloves are just one of a hundred dilemmas.

For example she must decide soon what scent to wear this Season. In past years she avoided all Rackham perfumes, fearing it would offend Good Taste to be a walking endorsement of her father-in-law's business. However, the ladies' journals are lately unanimous in their opinion that the truly refined woman restricts her perfumes to eau de Cologne and lavender water, and as these are the same from one maker to another, mightn't it be all right to use Rackham's? Only she would know, after all-making her choice purely a moral one. Also, should she wear her white silk dress on Croquet Day at the Carcajoux? The weather can't be trusted, and her skirts might get muddy and wet, but white would go so well, and no one else will be wearing it. Of course she can instruct Mrs Le Quire (her new dressmaker) to add a port-jupe to the skirts, but would this solve the problem? Agnes foresees difficulties in attempting, simultaneously, to play croquet and hold her hems suspended on a chain.

Mrs Gooch's visit, and her excellent advice about pills and friendly pharmacists ("That old sourpuss Gosling will only give you a lecture, but the others-if you bat your eyelashes sweetly-are no trouble at all") have made such a difference to the quality of Agnes's life that she's determined to receive, from now on, as many visits from as many ladies as possible. Send out the message for all to hear: Mrs Agnes Rackham is "in"!

She has thrown away all the calling cards she received during the dark times, the months of illness and pecuniary humiliations. New ones have taken their place-from new people, come to see the new Agnes Rackham.

Today, Mrs Amphlett called. The dear woman, in choosing to visit between four and five o'clock, rather than three and four, treated Agnes not as someone seeking to re-enter Society after an illness, but as a healthy human to whom an ordinary social call was due. How kind of her!

In the flesh, Mrs Amphlett differed remarkably from Agnes's vague recollection of her, glimpsed across a ballroom two years ago. Then, Mrs Amphlett was (not to mince words) buxom and freckle-faced. Today, in Agnes's parlour, she was thin as a reed, with a flawless white complexion. Of course Agnes, mad with curiosity, longed to sweep politeness aside and ask, but in the end, Mrs Amphlett volunteered the secrets, namely: (1) a diet of water, raw carrot and mouthfuls of oxtail soup, and (2) Rowlands' Kalydor Lotion, with a little "finishing off" from a face powder.

"I should never have recognised you!" Agnes complimented her.

"You are too kind."

"Not at all." (in truth, lovely though Mrs Amphlett looked, Agnes was just the slightest bit discomposed by the way the dear woman made several references to "the baby" and "motherhood", as if under the delusion that this were a fit topic for discussion. Might it perhaps be a little too soon after her confinement for Mrs Amphlett to be back in Society just yet? Agnes did wonder, but laid the thought aside, in a spirit of generosity.

An ally in the Season is not to be sniffed at!) "And you, Mrs Rackham; you do look most terribly well. What's your secret?"'

Agnes merely smiled, having by now learned her lesson not to mention her guardian angel to persons she wouldn't trust with her life.

Now Agnes stands at her bedroom window, wishing that her guardian angel would materialise under the trees, just there outside the Rackham gates. Her hand itches to wave. But miracles are not for the asking; they come only when the stern eyes of God droop shut for a moment, and our Lady takes advantage of His inattention to grant an illicit mercy. God, Agnes has decided, is an Anglican, whereas Our Lady is of the True Faith; the two of them have an uneasy relationship, unable to agree on anything, except that if They divorce, the Devil will leap gleefully into the breach. So, They tolerate each other, and take care of the world as best They can.

Moving to the mirror, Agnes examines her face. She is almost half-way through her twenties, and the spectre of senescence looms.

She must take the utmost care to preserve herself from injury and decay, for there are some things that sleep cannot undo. Each night she travels to the Convent of Health, where her heavenly sisters soothe and tend her, but if she's in too bad a state when she arrives at their ivy-crested gates, they shake their heads and scold her gently. Then she knows that in the morning when she wakes, she'll still be in pain.

She is in pain now. An illusion of falling snow twinkles in front of her right eye, and a pulse beats behind. Could it be that the last little rosy pill she took was disgorged, unnoticed, when she had the mishap with the chicken broth? Perhaps she should take another… although the mishap has left a bitter taste in her mouth and she would rather take a sip of Godfrey's Cordial instead.

On her left brow, almost invisible inside the crescent of golden hairs above her eye, is a scar, incurred in a fall when she was a child. That scar is permanent, an indelible flaw. How terrifying is the vulnerability of flesh! She frowns, then hastily unfrowns, for fear of the lines etching themselves permanently into her forehead.

Closing her eyes, she imagines her guardian angel standing behind her. Cool hands, smooth as alabaster, are laid against her temples, massaging tenderly. Spirit fingers penetrate her skin and sink into her skull, insubstantial and yet as satisfying as nails against an itch. They locate the source of the pain, tug on it, and a clump of Evil comes away from Agnes's soul, like a web of pith from an orange. She shivers with pleasure, to feel her naked soul cleansed like this.

She opens her eyes, and is puzzled to find herself on the floor, sprawled supine, staring up at the slowly revolving ceiling and the worried upside-down face of Clara.

"Shall I call for help, ma'am?"' the servant enquires.

"Of course not," says Agnes, blinking hard. "I'm quite well."

"That Doctor Harris seemed a nice man," suggests Clara, referring to the physician who attended Mrs Rackham's previous emergency. "Not a bit like Doctor Curlew. Shall I…?"' "No, Clara. Help me to my feet."

"He was ever so concerned about your collapses," the servant perseveres, as she hauls her mistress up from the floor.

"He was young… and handsome, as I recall," pants Agnes, adjusting to verticality with a giddy sway. "No doubt you'd enjoy… seeing him again. But we mustn't waste his time, must we?"' "I'm only thinking of your health, ma'am," insists Clara, nettled. "Mr Rackham has said we're to tell him if you're poorly."

Agnes's hold on Clara's arm spasms into a claw-grip.

"You're not to tell William of this," she whispers.

"Mr Rackham said-"' "Mr Rackham" doesn't have to know everything that goes on," maintains Agnes, inspired, as if by a tongue of fire, with the means to reassert control over Clara. "For example, he needn't know where you found the money to buy that corset. It suits you terribly well, but… we ladies are entitled to some secrets, yes?"'

Clara turns pale. "Yes, ma'am."

"Now," sighs Agnes, smoothing the creases from her sleeves, "be a dear and fetch me the Godfrey's Cordial."

Intermittent, gentle gusts of wind, blowing through the French windows like the playful teasing of ghostly children, make the pages of Sugar's novel flap.

She has long ago put down her pen, and the breezes thrust the fluttering top sheet against the inky-nibbed instrument, creating an aeolian welter of nonsense. Sugar doesn't notice, and continues to squint absentmindedly into the sunlit foliage of her little garden.

She'd hoped that by moving her escritoire very close to the open windows, close enough to breathe the fresh air of Priory Close and smell the earth below the rose-bush, she would be inspired to write. So far, nothing has come-though at least she's still awake, which is an improvement on what happens whenever she takes the manuscript to bed …

Outside on the footpath above her head, where almost no one ever seems to walk, a couple of sparrows are hopping to and fro, gathering scraps for a nest. Wouldn't it be nice if they built their nest in the rosebush just here? But no, the most interest they take in Sugar's shady patch of untended greenery is to pilfer a twig from it, to house themselves elsewhere.

The wind-blown page flutters again, and this time the pen rolls off, clattering onto the desktop.

Instinctively, Sugar jerks forward, but succeeds only in bumping the inkwell so that three or four big droplets of black ink are knocked free of the table, to splash onto the skirts of her jade dress.

"God damn God and all His…" she begins angrily, then sighs. This is scarcely the end of the world. She can try to wash the ink out-and if it doesn't go, or if she can't be bothered, well, she can buy a new dress. Another envelope from William's bank arrived this morning, to add to the others in the bottom drawer of her dresser. His generosity hasn't diminished, or perhaps he lacks the imagination to alter the instructions to his banker; whatever the reason, she's accumulating more money than she can spend, even if she were to make a habit of spilling ink on her clothes.

She must finish her novel. Nothing like it has ever been published before; it would cause a sensation.

If conceited fools like William's school cronies can make a stir with their feeble blasphemies, think of the effect she could have with this, the first book to tell the truth about prostitution! The world is ready for the truth; the modern age is here; every year another report appears that examines poverty by means of statistical research rather than romantic claptrap. All that's needed now is a great novel that will capture the imagination of the public -move them, enrage them, thrill them, terrify them, scandalise them. A story that will seize them by the hand and lead them into streets where they've never dared set foot, a tale that throws back the sheets from acts never shown and voices never heard. A tale that fearlessly points the finger at those who are to blame. Until such a novel is published, prostitutes will continue to be smothered under the shroud of The Great Social Evil, while the cause of their misery walks free…

Sugar stares down at the ink patterns the wind has made. It's time she replaced them with something more meaningful. All the fallen women of the world are relying on her to tell the truth. "This story," she used to say to those of her friends who could read,

"isn't about me, it's about all of us…"

Now, in her sunlit study in Priory

Close, she begins to sweat.

"I'm dying, Shush." That's what Elizabeth said to her, on the last night she lived-the night before you met Sugar in that stationer's in Greek Street. "Tomorrow morning I'll be cold meat. They'll clean the room and toss me in the river. Eels'll eat my eyes."

"They won't toss you in the river. I won't let them." Elizabeth's grip on her hand was damned strong, for such a wasted bag of bones.

"What do you mean to do?"' Elizabeth wheezed mockingly. "Gather up my mother and father, and all my relations, for a fancy Christian burial, with the vicar telling them how good I was?"' "If that's what you want."

"Christ Jesus, Sugar, you're such a shameless liar. Don't you never blush?"' "I'm in earnest. If you want a burial, I'll arrange it."

"Christ Jesus, Christ Jesus… what mullock you talk. Is that how you got yourself into the West End? Telling men their cocks are the biggest you ever saw?"' "There's no need to insult me just because you're dying."

The laughter cleared the air a little, but Elizabeth's hand around her own was still tight as a dog's jaws.

"No one will remember me," the dying woman said, licking at the sweat rolling down her face. "Eels'll eat my eyes, and no one will even know I've lived."

"Nonsense."

"I was dead already, the first time I opened my legs. "After today, I have no daughter"-that's what my father said."

"More fool him."

"A whole life, gone like a piss in an alley." In the sickly yellow light, and with all the sweat on Elizabeth's cheeks, it was difficult to tell if she was weeping. "I tried, Shush. I did my best to stay out of God's bad books. Even after I was a whore, I did my best, in case I got a second chance. Pick any day from the last twenty years, see what I tried, and you'd have to admit I didn't give up easy."

"Of course not. Everyone understands that."

"Nobody's come to see me, you know that?

Nobody. Except you."

"I'm sure they'd all come if they could.

They're frightened, that's all."

"Oh, I'm sure, I'm sure. And that's the biggest cock I ever saw…"

"Do you want a drink?"'

"No I don't want a drink. Are you going to put me in your book?"' "What book?"' "The book you're writing. Women Against Men, wasn't it called?"' "That was years ago. It's had about a dozen titles since then."

"Are you going to put me in it?"'

"Do you want me to?"'

"Never mind what I want. Are you going to put me in it?"' "If you want me to."

"Christ Jesus, Sugar. Don't you never blush?"'

Sugar stands up from the writing-desk and walks to the French windows, to shake off the memory of Elizabeth's clammy, grasping hand.

Nervously she clenches and unclenches her own, imagining the dying woman's sweat on them still, though she knows it's her own perspiration prickling in the cracks of her leathery palms. She holds up her hands, angles the palms so that they're lit up by the sunlight. Her skin has been frightful lately, despite the fact that she's been salving her hands with Rackham's Cr@eme de Jeunesse nightly. Oh, for a jar of bear's grease such as was always in supply at Mrs Castaway's-but she can't imagine where she could buy bear's grease in Marylebone.

Glancing downwards, she notes that the stains on her dress have expanded and merged into a very big blot indeed; she'd better change into a fresh dress in case William comes. She closes the untidy pages of her manuscript inside its hard covers. The phalanx of crossed-out titles stares up at her; the first few are densely inked, obliterated beyond recall, but the later ones are cancelled perfunctorily with a single line drawn through. Women Against Men is still clearly legible, as is its successor, An Angry Cry from an Unmarked Grave. The most recent, The Fall and Rise of Sugar, is a mere scrawl, tentative and thin. She opens at page one, and reads "All men are the same…" and the twenty, fifty words that follow, in a single glance. How peculiar, the way a passage that's been read many times can be read so fast, while something new must be read laboriously, word for word.

This whole first page plays almost automatically in her mind, like a barrel-organ ground by a monkey.

My name is Sugar-or if it isn't, I know no better.

I am what you would call a Fallen Woman, but I assure you I did not fall-I was pushed. Vile man, eternal Adam, I indict you!

Sugar bites her lip in embarrassment, so hard she draws blood.

Two hours later, having stowed her novel away in its drawer and read the latest Illustrated London News instead, Sugar is in the bath again. Half her life nowadays seems spent in the bath, preparing herself in case William should visit. Not that she regards him as worthy of such fuss, you understand; not that she doesn't despise him, or, if that's too harsh a word, at least strongly disapprove of him… It's just that, well, his interest in her is a valuable commodity, and she ought to keep it alive for as long as she can.

If she can make his affection last-his love, as he called it-she has a chance-a once-in-a-lifetime chance-to cheat Fate. Under Rackham's wing, anything is possible…

Of all the nooks in her Priory Close suite, it's this black-and-mustard bathroom, this glazed little chamber, that she's most at home in.

The other rooms are too big, too empty; the ceilings are too far away, the walls and floors too bare. She wishes they were cosy and cluttered with her own furnishings and bric-a-brac, but she's been too timid to buy anything, and she can't imagine what. Only this small bathroom, for all its eerie sheen, feels snug and finished: the ribbon of black wallpaper is perfect for staring into, the wooden floor glows in the light from above, the towels on the bronze rails are soft and plush, and all the little bottles and jars of Rackham produce are cheerful as toys. Most reassuring of all is the humid haze of steam that hangs above her tub, swirling back and forth with the slowness of cloud.

She shouldn't be bathing this often, she knows. It's bad for her skin. That's why her hands are sore and cracking; it's not Cr@eme de Jeunesse or bear's grease she needs, it's to spend less time immersed in hot soapy water! Yet, despite knowing this, every day, sometimes twice a day, she fills the tub and allows herself to slide in, because she loves it. Or, if love isn't the right word, then… it comforts her. She's awfully disconsolate lately, shedding tears for no apparent reason, suffering fits of anxiety, dreaming of childhood horrors she'd thought she'd forgotten. She, who only recently was the sort of woman who could hear a man say, "What is there to stop me killing you now?"' and disarm him with a wink; she seems to be turning into a girl who couldn't endure the sound of a lewd whistle in the street.

"You're going soft," she says to herself, and her voice, so ugly and unmusical compared to Agnes Rackham's, reverberates in the steamy acoustic of the bathroom. "You're going soft," she says again, trying to raise her tone as the words pass through her throat. A lilt, she must try to speak with a lilt. She succeeds only in lisping. "You sound," she says, tossing her sponge at her toes, "like a sodomite."

Her right hand stings like the devil; squeezing the sponge out has insinuated soap into the cracks of her palms, the tender, almost bleeding fissures in her flesh. In this sense at least, she's undeniably softer than she used to be.

"Oh, William, what a lovely surprise!" she rehearses, trying for the lilt again, then laughs, a harsh sound against the tiles.

A fart swims up through the bathwater and breaks the surface with a damp puff of stink.

William, she knows, is unlikely to come today. The Season is at hand, and (as he regretfully explained to her, on his last visit) he's going to be wretchedly busy, pulled from one dinner party to the next, shepherded "by force" into theatres and opera houses.

"Who'll force you?"' she dared to ask.

"Agnes?"'

He sighed, already out of bed, reaching for his trousers. "No, I mustn't blame her. This elaborate game we play, this merry dance we must conform to whether we like it or not… its rules are set by grander authorities than my little wife. I blame…" (and, apologetic for his hasty leave-taking, he spared a moment to stroke her freshly-washed hair) "I blame Society!"

In Agnes Rackham's bedroom, on Agnes Rackham's bed, dozens of cards are laid out in the shape (more or less) of a human being.

"Do you know what this is?"' asks Agnes of Clara, who has just entered and is contemplating the display with a frown of puzzlement.

Clara looks closer, wondering if her mistress is playing a joke on her, or if she's merely mad as usual.

"It's… invitations, ma'am."

Indeed, the mosaic-like shape with the unnaturally small waist and big head is fashioned entirely from cartes d'invitation-all requesting the pleasure of Agnes's company in the Season ahead.

"It's more than that, Clara," says Agnes, encouraging her servant to develop a latent appreciation of symbolism. Again, the poor menial suspects she's being gulled and, after a long pause, Mrs Rackham puts her out of her misery.

"It's forgiveness, Clara," she says.

The servant nods, and is relieved to be excused.

Yet, unbeknownst to Clara, Mrs Rackham is quite right, and not mad. To many of the ladies and gentlemen seeking to participate in the Season, the month inaugurated by Fool's Day is one of galling humiliation, as they discover they're among the Unforgiven. The invitations they sent out for dinner parties and other "occasions" to be held in May have harvested a mound of replies inscribed Regret Not Able To Attend, and no reciprocal invitations have come. Thus the lengthening April evenings find men sitting up late by their dying firesides, staring with the stoniness usually reserved for bankruptcy or a wife's infidelity; women shed tears and plot impotent revenges. One can be almost sure, if Lady So-and-So's ball is to be held on May 14th, that not to have received a lace-edged carte d'invitation by April 14th is a decree of exile.

Not that social ruin is wrought all at once: few of those who shone in the better constellations one year are utterly cast down the next; more often, in order to identify themselves as fallen, fiendishly complicated calculations must be made in the mathematics of rank. For Agnes Rackham no such calculations are necessary; doors are opening for her everywhere.

It is rather to Henry and Mrs Fox that the April mails have brought no joy. Each received a few invitations-more than none, but less than ever before.

Each of them has laid their invitations away in a drawer, and replied Regret Not Able To Attend. In Mrs Fox's case, the reason is ill health: she's no longer in any state to attempt all the standing, promenading, croqueting and so forth that the Season requires.

Her well-being has faded so remarkably that strangers notice it at once and murmur:

"Not long for this world." Friends and relatives are still half-blinded by the after-image of her former vigour, and whisper that Emmeline looks "under the weather" and "ought to rest". They advise her to enjoy the Spring sunshine, as there's no better tonic for pallor. "And do you think," they ask her tactfully, "it's good for you to be spending quite so much time in the slums?"'

The second Sunday morning in April finds Mrs Fox and Henry Rackham, as always, walking together down an aisle of trees, after church.

"Well," Henry pronounces stiffly.

"I, for one, am not sorry to be excused from the coming revelry."

"Nor am I," says Mrs Fox. "But that isn't what we're fretting about, is it? We haven't been excused; we've been rejected. And for what reasons, one wonders?

Are we both such Untouchables? Are we so far beyond the pale?"' "Evidently so," frowns Henry, walking slowly and dolefully. He has, as always, failed to notice the tongue in her cheek-one of his most endearing weaknesses, in Emmeline's estimation.

"Ah, Henry," she says, "we must face the truth. We have nothing to offer our peers.

Just look at you: you could have been the head of a great Concern, but instead you refuse all but a meagre allowance, and live in a cottage the size of a labourer's. No doubt the Best People have decided that if they let you in their door, who knows what human refuse will come knocking next?"' She observes Henry blushing. Och, why does he blush so? He's worth ten of the "Best People"!

"Also," she continues, "you're a man who can't tolerate God being made to stand aside for gaiety, and… well, you must admit that makes you rather a dull prospect at a party."

He grunts, blushing darker. "Well, there's a string of dinner parties to which I was invited -at my brother's house. I asked to be spared."

"Oh but Henry, Mrs Rackham thinks the world of you!"

"Yes, but at William's dinner parties I'm always shoved opposite someone I can't abide, and for the rest of the evening I'm condemned to the most tiresome intercouse. This year, I decided: no more. I run into Bodley and Ashwell often enough as it is."

"Dear Henry," smiles Mrs Fox.

"You could have ignored them. They are jackals; you are a lion. A reticent and gentle sort of lion, I'll admit, but…"

"I did not ask William not to invite you." Anger is making him walk faster, and she must struggle to keep up with him, her dainty boots, so much smaller than his feet, trotting over the cobbles.

"Ah, well," she says, lifting her skirts ever-so-slightly to ease her progress.

"I shouldn't imagine an unattractive widow is ever in great demand. Much less one who works.

And then, if the work is reforming fallen women… well!"

"It's charitable work," declares Henry.

"Plenty of the Best People do charitable work." Her description of herself as unattractive has made him walk even faster: he must outrun his desire to extol her beauty.

"The Rescue Society is a charity, I suppose," concedes Mrs Fox. "In the sense that our labour is unpd." (as she trots by his side, she fumbles in her sleeve, trying to extract a handkerchief she has stowed there.) "Though I've met ladies who presumed I must be drawing a wage… As if no woman would do such work unless she were in desperate want. Nobody quite knows, you see, if Bertie left me well- or badly-off.

Ah, rumours, rumours… Do let's sit down for a while."

They've come to a stone bridge, whose bowed walls are low and smooth and clean enough to sit on.

Only now does Henry notice that Mrs Fox is breathing laboriously, perspiration twinkling on her pale face.

"I have marched you too fast again, big oaf that I am," he says.

"Not at all," she pants, dabbing her temples with her handkerchief. "It's a fine day for a brisk walk."

"You look weary."

"I have a cold, I think." She smiles, to reassure him. "A cold, now that the warm weather is here. You see? Contrary as always!"

Her breast rises and falls with the rapidity of a bird's but, mindful of the impression she is making, she leaves room for a quick breath between clauses. "You look weary too."

"I haven't been sleeping well."

"My father has very… effective medicines for that," Mrs Fox declares. "Or you could try warm milk."

"I prefer to let Nature take its course."

"Quite right," says Mrs Fox, closing her eyes to quell a surge of giddiness. "Who knows? Tonight you may sleep like a baby."

Henry nods, hands clasped between his knees.

"God grant."

They sit for a while longer. Water burbles unseen below them and, in time, another pair of church-goers cross the bridge, gesturing almost imperceptibly in greeting.

"You know, Henry," says Mrs Fox, when the passers-by have gone. "My sisters at the Rescue Society have urged me… to work less during the Season… to enjoy some recreation… to take advantage of the coming delights…" She squints eastwards, as if she might catch a glimpse of London's squalid rookeries from here. "And yet, away from the streets, I achieve nothing… And every day, one more woman comes to that pass where there's no longer any hope for a good life-only a good death." She looks to her friend, but his eyes are downcast.

Henry is staring into the chiaroscuro pictures of his imagination. An anonymous woman, unscathed from a thousand carnal acts, has finally reached "that pass" to which Mrs Fox refers-the fateful copulation when the worm of Death enters her. From that moment on, she is doomed. Hair grows on her body as she degenerates from human to bestial form. On her deathbed, still unrepentant, she is monstrously hirsute, sporting hair not just on her pudendum but also her armpits, arms, legs and chest. Henry imagines a sort of curvaceous ape, raving in agonised delirium on a filthy mattress, witnessed by surgeons aghast under the lanterns they hold in their raised and trembling fists. Those "wild women" brought back from Borneo-those are probably nothing less than the moribund victims of sexual excess! After all, aren't these island races notorious for their-"Ah well," sighs Mrs Fox, pushing herself erect once more and dusting off her bustle with a tiny clothes-brush from her reticule. "We must have our own private little Season, Henry, just you and I. Its highlights will be conversation, walks, and health-giving sunshine."

"Nothing could give me more pleasure,"

Henry affirms, glad that she's not quite so breathless. But, although the sun is shining strongly on them both, Mrs Fox's face remains most terribly pale, and her mouth is still most indecorously open, as if a physical imperative, in defiance of decorum, has parted her lips.

Sugar looks over her shoulder at her reflection in the mirror, guiding her hands as she buttons up her dress. She wields a pair of "whore's hooks"-curved, long-handled instruments so nicknamed because they enable a woman to don a lady's dress without the aid of a maidservant.

When the last button, at the very nape of her neck, is fastened, Sugar runs two fingers around the silken lining of the tight collar, freeing the stray hairs trapped there. She has chosen this outmoded slate-grey dress because William has never seen her wear it, and so if he catches a glimpse at a distance, he shan't recognise her. Her hair she has parted, uncharacteristically, down the middle and knotted back in a severe chignon, so that scarcely a wisp of it can be seen under her bonnet.

"This will do," she decides.

She's tired of waiting for William. Days go by without a visit; then, when he does call on her, he has a mind full of concerns from his secret life-secret from her, that is. All his friends and family know him better than she, and they haven't any use for the knowledge; it's so unfair!

Well, she refuses to remain in the dark.

Her destiny advances not one whit while she languishes in her rooms, drying her hair in front of the fire, reading newspapers, reading about excise duty to prepare for conversations that never come, telling herself she isn't hungry, resisting the temptation to fill the bathtub. The more William does without her, out there in a world in which she plays no part, the less inclined he'll be to confide in her. From his cast-off perfume books she can learn about spirituous extract of tuberose, and oil of cassia as a cheap substitute for cinnamon, but she needs to understand so much more about William Rackham than that! More than he's ready to divulge!

So, she has made up her mind: she'll spy on him. Everywhere he goes, she will follow.

Whatever he sees, she will see also. Whoever he meets, she'll meet too-if necessarily at a distance. His world will become hers; she'll lap up every drop of knowledge. Then, when at last William finds the time to visit her, and she has his wrinkled brow against her breast, she can astound him with how instinctively she understands his troubles, how unerring is her intuition of his needs.

By sharing his life illicitly, she'll earn the privilege of sharing it legitimately.

She pauses, for one last glance in the mirror before leaving the house. She's scarcely recognisable, even to herself.

"Perfect," she says, and unhooks a parasol from the hideous but sturdy coat-stand.

What became of the flimsy one William kicked so angrily? He put it out in the street, and the next day it wasn't there anymore. Did scavengers pounce on it, perhaps? Do such things happen in the decorous streets of Marylebone?

She steps out into the fresh air and casts an eye over her surroundings. Not a soul in sight.

For the next three days and a half-or, as she calculates, fifty-five whole hours of waking existence-Sugar attempts to become William Rackham's shadow.

An unconscionable amount of that time is wasted loitering near his house in Chepstow Villas, waiting for him to emerge. She paces up and down the street and mews on three sides of the Rackham grounds, to keep her toes from going numb and her mind from going off its hinges, and twirls her parasol impatiently. What can William be doing in there? He's certainly not playing parlour games with his wife and daughter!

Is he writing Rackham correspondence, perhaps? If so, how long can a few letters possibly take, now that the Hopsom affair is out of the way? Rackham Perfumeries is a large concern with a hierarchy of employees; aren't there what-d'you-call-'ems-subordinates, underlings-taking care of more mundane matters?

Or is it breakfast that occupies William so long? No wonder he's getting tubby, if he spends half the morning eating. Sugar, by contrast, begins each spying day with a bun or an apple bought from a street-seller on her way here.

Fortunately the weather is mild, on these first few mornings of her surveillance of the Rackham house. The gardener is constantly poking around in the grounds, satisfying himself that the new growth is only in the designated places-another reason why Sugar can't loiter too long in the same spot. She'd hoped that the mild weather would permit William's daughter to come out to play, but the child's nurse keeps her well under wraps. Sugar's not even sure of the child's name; one morning, the gardener yelled "Hello, Miss Sophie!" while peering up at a window on the first floor-and was shortly afterwards accosted by a matronly-looking servant, who had a word in his ear, causing him to cringe in apology.

Sophie, then-unless Shears's greeting was addressed to the nurse. How humiliating to be acquainted with every vein of William's prick, but not know the name of his daughter! All Sugar's attempts to extract it without appearing to be pumping him have failed; nor can she risk uttering it herself, in case he's withholding it on purpose. So, until the nurse decides that the weather is finally good enough for little girls to be brought forth, Sophie Rackham must remain a rumour.

On the second day, Mrs Rackham herself emerges from the front door and, accompanied by her maid, walks purposefully forth. Sugar is tempted to follow, for Agnes is plainly on her way to town, and her enchanting voice, too far away to be intelligible, sings like Pied Piper flutings on the breeze. But Sugar resolves to stay hidden in her shady bower of trees; it's William she ought to be tailing, and besides, there have been too many moments already when the curtains at one of the Rackhams' windows suddenly parted and Agnes was standing there, staring out at the world-or, more often than not, staring straight at the spot where Sugar happened to be dawdling. It's a good thing Sugar is veiled, and under a parasol for good measure, or Mrs Rackham would surely have committed her face to memory by now.

No, it's William she's waiting for. It's William whose movements and habits she needs to know intimately. And what Sugar learns in these first fifty-five hours of stalking him is that, for all his talk of being an individualist and keeping his duller business rivals guessing, he is a man of habit.

Two p.m. is his hour for catching the city-bound omnibus. On each of the three days, he makes his rendezvous with the great lumbering vehicle and climbs into the cabin, taking his seat facing the sunnier side of the road. Sugar, hurrying on to the steely lip of the omnibus at the last possible instant, climbs up to the roof and takes a seat over William's head. At this quiet time of day, she's spared the indignity of rubbing shoulders with a jostle of bowler-hatted clerks; instead, she shares the hard benches and nippy air with other misfit souls who have reason not to ride below. On the first day, a gaggle of fat mothers with toddling children too restless to risk within the cabin; on the second, an old man with a six-foot-long parcel bound in twine; on the third, another mother and child, four stiffly-dressed sightseers conversing excitedly in a foreign tongue, and one pale young man clutching a dark book in his knobble-wristed hands.

On this third journey, Sugar makes the mistake of folding up her parasol and relaxing against the back of her seat, confident that William will get out at the usual stop, the nearest to his Air Street office. Indeed William does, but not before the pale young man has been captivated by the beauty of the grey-clad woman in the veil and, taking her relaxed pose for a Pre-Raphaelite slump of lassitude, he leaps up gallantly to assist her when she rises to go.

"Allow me," he begs, his slightly frayed arms offering themselves, his eyes glowing with every kind of yearning imaginable.

Sugar, anxious lest the disembarking William Rackham should turn and look up at them, hesitates on the stair.

"No need, no need," she whispers, aware that her soft croak will only compound the misunderstanding.

"Thank you." And the omnibus moves off with her still on it.

Not that it makes much difference. She alights at the next stop, and walks back to the Rackham office, a dreary grey building with an ornamental R on a brass plaque.

William spends the same amount of time there every day, about two hours, doing God knows what. She longs to be a fly on the wall of that inner sanctum, but instead must hang about on the streets, counting hansoms to ease the boredom.

At five o'clock, after consuming the same cake from the same cakeshop and waiting for the worst of the traffic to abate, William heads for home.

She wishes he'd decide to go to Priory Close instead (in which event she would follow on behind and contrive to meet him on the footpath, pretending to have been taking a constitutional). But William does not alight prematurely; he stays on the omnibus all the way to Chepstow Villas.

Yet, after William's return to the

Rackham house, small rewards do come

Sugar's way.

On the first evening, William and Agnes go out for dinner to Lady Bridgelow's and, because the residences are only a dozen houses apart, they set off on foot-with Sugar following at a discreet distance. She notes that the Rackhams, although they advance side by side, are unconnected; not merely disdaining to walk arm-in-arm, but scarcely acknowledging each other's existence. William proceeds with loosely clenched fists, his shoulders squared, as if steeling himself for a formidable challenge.

Hours later, when he and his wife are walking home in the lamp-lit dark, the disjunction between them is even worse; Sugar, grateful for the drizzle that allows her to hide under her parasol, follows close behind.

"Well, that was awfully pleasant," declares William, awkwardly, "as always."

Agnes doesn't reply, but trots mechanically on, her right hand pressed against her temple.

"Do you have a headache, dear?"' says

William.

"It's nothing," she replies.

For a minute they walk in silence, then

William laughs.

"That Bunce fellow-he's quite a character, isn't he? Constance really does have an extraordinary circle of friends."

"Yes," Agnes agrees, as the two of them reach the Rackham gates, and Sugar rustles past them in the gloom. "It's a pity I detest her so much. Isn't it odd that someone with a title can be so very smarmy and common?"'

To this, Sugar is fairly sure, William has no reply.

The following night, the Rackhams stay indoors. Sugar walks the peripheries for as long as she can bear, growing colder and colder, then hails a cab back to Priory Close. The time, she discovers when she gets there, is only half-past eight; she'd imagined it was near midnight. Maybe William will still come and visit her! She haunts her rooms like a disconsolate animal, pacing the soft carpets just as restlessly as she paced the streets, until she surrenders to the comforting embrace of a warm misty bath.

On the third night, however, her decision to sacrifice her idle hours to spying is, at last, richly rewarded. William leaves the house well after dark, alone, and hails a cab.

The gods are on Sugar's side, for a second cab trundles close behind, so she suffers not even a moment's anxiety that William may escape her.

"Follow the cab in front," she instructs her driver, and he tips his hat with a smirk.

The journey ends in Soho, outside a small theatre called The Tewkesbury Palace. William alights, unaware of Sugar alighting twenty feet away from him, and pays his driver, while she pays hers. Then he steps forward into the lamp-lit hurly-burly, glancing quickly around his person for pickpockets, but failing to spot the veiled woman at his rear.

What, thinks Sugar, can William be seeking here? The Tewkesbury is a notorious meeting-place for homosexuals, and here are two well-dressed gentlemen advancing on him with outstretched arms. For a moment her lips curl in bemused disgust: have these florid fellows, now slapping William affectionately on the back, managed to lure him away from her bed?

Impossible! No one plays the silent flute better than she does!

Within seconds, however, her misunderstanding is dispelled. These men are Bodley and Ashwell, and the three friends have come here tonight especially to see the Tewkesbury's featured attraction-Unthan, the Pedal Paganini, billed as "The Only Violinist in the World Without Arms!"

Sugar joins the motley queue of working folk and well-heeled connoisseurs to pay for admission. Although only two bodies separate her from Rackham and his companions, she overhears their conversation only imperfectly through the raucous babble of the crowd.

"… if I had no arms," Ashwell is saying, "… Impressionist painter!"

"Yes!" cries Bodley. "Specially made dummy arms! One hand purposefully clutching a paint-brush!"

The three men laugh uproariously, though Sugar fails to see anything witty. Art has never been her strong suit; all those Magdalens and Virgin Marys hoarded by Mrs Castaway put her off. Now, waiting in line to enter a low Soho theatre, she makes a mental note: brush up on Art.

Inside the Tewkesbury, a converted wool hall just about big enough for chamber concerts, but utilised instead for exhibitions of freaks and illusionists, Sugar shuffles amongst the herd of bodies. How horrid they smell! Don't any of them bathe? She can't recall ever noticing before the sheer uncleanness of common people. Rationing her breaths in the oppressive air, she takes her seat one row behind William and his friends.

On stage, a succession of entertainers fritters the time away-whetting audience appetite, with their mediocre songs and surpriseless magic, for the main attraction.

Bodley and Ashwell mutter loudly, and share private jokes; William endures passively, as though his companions are children whom he has indulged with an outing.

At last there's a surge of applause and whistling in the theatre, and a stage-hand places a large four-legged stool on the boards, close to the footlights. Moments later, a violin and bow are deposited on a red velvet cushion next to the stool, earning more applause and a few cheers. Finally, Unthan walks on. He's a short man, smartly dressed in the garb of an orchestra musician, complete with tails but devoid of sleeves. His clean-shaven face, obviously not English, is in its structure a little simian, with a monkey's look of alert melancholy. His curly hair has been persuaded to adhere in straight furrows by much oil and combing.

With the profoundest solemnity Unthan takes his seat and begins, with his feet, to remove his shoes and stockings; titters from the audience leave him unmoved. He neatly folds the stockings and places each one into its corresponding shoe, then takes between his naked toes the body of the violin and deftly lifts it up onto his left shoulder, pinning it there with his chin. His left leg he lowers to the floor while the toes of his right move crablike along the violin's neck until they rest on the lower notes of the fingerboard.

With no visible difficulty, the contorted Unthan fetches up the bow with his left foot and swings it up to rest on the strings. There's a faint clattering from the orchestra pit, then the ensemble begins to play, softly and sadly, a tune which sounds almost recognisable to all those present-until the Pedal Paganini begins his performance.

Unthan plays execrably, sending a shiver of squeamishness, even outrage, through the theatre.

Music is being molested here! Yet there is pity, too, excited by the spectacle of the little cripple sawing away, his face proud and sombre despite its monkeyish shape and the mass of crinkly hair working loose over his wrinkled brow. By the time Unthan has, some twenty minutes later, exhausted his modest repertoire, the audience's mood has shifted, and many patrons-including Sugar-have damp eyes without knowing why. In the echoing decay of the orchestra's final crescendo, Unthan fiddles one last vibrato flourish and, with a jerk of his feet, lets both violin and bow fall into his lap. He utters a startling cry of triumph or agony, then prostrates himself, the last of his hair unravelling. A full three minutes of thunderous applause ensues.

"Ha ha!" hoots Bodley. "Jolly good!"

Afterwards, Messrs Bodley Ashwell and Rackham stroll the streets of Soho, drunk as lords. All three are in high spirits, despite the drizzle; Unthan, they agree, was worth the price of admission-an all-too-rare circumstance in a world where, too often, pleasures fail to live up to the claims made for them.

"Well, friends," declares William. "After this ape… ape… apex, all exshperience must be a shtep downwards. I'm going home."

"My God, Bodley!" exclaims

Ashwell. "Do you hear this?"' "Can't we tempt you with a fuck, Bill?"' "Not with you, Philip."

"A cruel thrust." The men are slowing to a standstill, allowing Sugar to move from shadow to shadow, closer and closer, until she's ensconced in a cul-de-sac barely wide enough for her skirts. Her veil is damp with breath, her back wet with sweat, as she strains to hear.

"Ach, but it's spring, Bill,"

Bodley says. "London's abloom with cunt. Can't you smell it on the air?"'

Rackham pokes his nose clownishly upwards, and sniffs. "Horse dung," he pronounces authoritatively, as if analysing the constitution of a manufactured fragrance.

"Dog shit. Beer. Cigar shmoke. Soot.

Tallow. Rotting cabbage. Beer-did I shay beer already? Macassar oil, on my own head. Not an ounce of cunt, sirs; not sho much as a drachm."

"Oh? That reminds me, Bill," says Ashwell. "There's something Bodley and I've been meaning to mention to you for a while. You recall the night we saw the Great Flatelli? Afterwards, we consulted More Sprees In London, and there was one girl described in the most glowing terms…"

"Sshugar, as I recall, yes?"'

William, for all his inebriation, sounds nonchalant.

"Well, the queer thing is, Bodley and I went to her house, but when we presented ourselves, we were told she wasn't at home."

"You poor gyps," mocks William.

"Didn't I warn you that might happen?"'

"Yes, I recall you did," pursues Ashwell. "However, we tried a second time, much later that evening…"

"-anda third time," interjects Bodley,

"a few weeks later…"

"Only to be told that this Sugar girl had been "removed" altogether! "A rich man has taken her for his mistress," the madam told us."

Sugar, her breath suddenly intolerably humid inside her veil, fumbles to pin the gauze back against her bonnet.

"What a shame," William mock-commiserates. "Pipped at the post!"

Inch by inch, Sugar leans her face forward, thankful for the rain as it cools her cheeks and prevents her breath clouding out of the shadowy passage to betray her.

"Yes, but by whom, one wonders? By whom?"'

The men are in her sights now; fortunately they're looking away. William laughs, and what an impressively natural performance it is! "No one I know, I'm sure," he says. "All the rich men of my acquaintance are pillars of deshency. That's why I reshort to you two, for relief!"

"But seriously, Bill… if you should hear a whisper…"

"… About where this girl is to be found…"

"If not now, then when her master has tired of her…"

"We're still dying to have a bash."

William laughs again.

"My, my: all this devotion-caused by one li'l entry in More Shprees in London.

Ah, the power of… of advertising!"

"We do hate to miss anything," admits

Bodley.

"The curse of being a modern man," opines Ashwell.

"Now, friends, goodnight," says Rackham.

"A most diverting evening thish's been."

The men shake gloved hands, and half-embrace, whereaf Bodley, being the best whistler of the three, pulls one glove off and shoves his thumb and forefinger into his mouth, to summon a hansom for William.

"Mush obliged," says William. "I really muzzbe getting home."

"Of course, of course. And we really must … must what, Ashwell?"'

The two comrades are dawdling off into the dark already, leaving Rackham stationed under a lamp-post in expectation of speedy deliverance. Sugar appraises her man from the rear as he stands there.

His hands are clasped behind his back, just over the part where, when naked, his unusually protuberant tailbone nestles between his buttocks. He seems taller than she remembered; his elongated shadow, pitch-black against the gas-lit cobbles, is cast straight towards her.

"It's high time we were in bed, too,"

Bodley is saying-or is it Ashwell? Their bodies are out of sight now, and their voices growing fainter.

"Quite so. Any particular…?"'

"I thought Mrs Tremain's."

"The wine's not so good there."

"True, but the girls are first-rate."

"Will they let us bring our own in?"'

"Our own girls?"'

And they're gone. For a few seconds William stands motionless, his head raised skyward as though he's listening for the approach of a cab. Then, startlingly, he claps one palm against the lamp-post and twirls slowly around it, like an urchin child at play. He chuckles as he walks this narrow circuit, and his free hand swings through the air.

"Abandon hope, you bumblers!" he crows.

"She's gone… Shafe from you… Shafe from all of you! No one else will ever touch her …" (round and round the lamp-post still he twirls.) "No one!"

And, as he laughs again, a hansom rattles into view.

Sugar waits until he has climbed aboard before emerging from her hiding-place; his cheery cry of "Chepshtow Villas, Notting Hill!" lets her know there's no hurry to follow. He's going home to sleep-and so, at last, can she.

As the clatter of hoofs recedes, she limps into the light. Her muscles, tense as bowstrings for so long, have seized up, and one of her legs is completely numb. The grime of the alley's cramped walls has smirched her skirts on both sides, a glistening sooty brand on the pale material. Yet she is elated.

Rackham is hers!

She hobbles along the road, grunting and chortling as the feeling returns to her nerves, longing to sink into her warm bath at home, knowing she'll sleep like a baby tonight. She tries to whistle for a cab, but no sooner does she purse her lips than her mouth widens into a grin and she giggles throatily. Cackling, she hurries towards the thoroughfare.

On her way, she meets a man walking unsteadily in the opposite direction; a massive man, a swell in every sense of the word, whose drunkenness is proclaimed on the breeze.

When his downcast eyes see the swirling hems of a woman's dress sweeping over the dark footpath towards him, he raises his face in curiosity.

At once his puffy features light up in recognition, though Sugar can't recall ever setting eyes on him before.

"Is it… is it not Sugar?"' he stammers, rocking on his feet. "My prodigal siren, where have you been? I beg you, take me to your bed, wherever it is, and cure this cockstand!"

"I'm sorry, sir," says Sugar, bowing slightly as she hurries past, her eyes fixed on the greater lights. "I've decided to become a nun."